Microsoft · Indexing
msnbot
This crawler has been retired by Microsoft.
Identify msnbot by its user agent. Check request identity, review robots.txt controls and track visits in Aiola Analytics.
Key facts
msnbotWhat msnbot is
Microsoft retired MSNBot in favor of Bingbot starting October 1, 2010. Microsoft preserved legacy MSNBot robots.txt rules, with BingBot-specific rules taking precedence when both exist.
In Aiola's taxonomy, Indexing means crawled for ai or search indexing.
msnbot user agent
Look for the match token inside the complete HTTP User-Agent header. Tokens can be spoofed, so use the network checks below for authentication.
msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)msnbotOfficial IP ranges
Microsoft has not published official IP ranges that Aiola successfully fetched for msnbot. Aiola does not list cloud-provider ranges or community guesses as if they authenticated this crawler.
Verify a msnbot request
No IP authentication method is documented in this record for msnbot. Its user-agent token is a claim, not proof of identity.
Use the exact header token for classification and apply your own access controls. Check the vendor documentation for any newly published IP, token or header verification method.
Control msnbot with robots.txt
Microsoft documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic.
User-agent: msnbot
Allow: /User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: /Aiola Analytics
See every msnbot visit on your site
Aiola tracks 70 AI, search and link-preview crawlers next to your human traffic. See when msnbot arrives, which pages it requests and how that changes over time. Hosted Analytics needs Pro or a trial.
Common questions
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